With a resounding 75% of votes cast in the New Jersey Democratic primary, Congressman Andy Kim secured his party’s nomination for November’s U.S. Senate election. Already, this nomination is breaking new ground, as he is the first Korean American to be nominated by either of the major parties in U.S. politics for a Senate seat. If Kim wins the New Jersey Senate race (as is widely projected), he will also become the first Korean American Senator in U.S. history.

Kim’s nomination will already act as a powerful factor in bringing greater national visibility to the priorities of the Korean American community, as well as the larger Asian American community. Consequently, if Kim’s Senate race is successful, his legislative agenda should prioritize addressing anti-Asian racism and discrimination, further promoting Asian American political engagement, and addressing the relatively high rate of income inequality among Asian Americans.

Perhaps befitting his trailblazer status, Kim’s path to Congress was not a typical one. Kim served as a key foreign affairs officer in the Obama administration, including acting as a political advisor to Gen. David Petraeus when the latter was commander of US Forces in Afghanistan, and as the sole advisor in the National Security Council for Iraq during the US military campaign against ISIL.

In subsequent years, Kim chose to run for office in response to Donald Trump’s regular criticisms of “DC insider [politician]s” disconnected from “real America,” and mounted a campaign against Republican Representative Tom MacArthur in New Jersey’s 3rd congressional district.

Despite facing steep odds in a constituency that had voted for Trump in 2016 and a campaign that was occasionally tinged with anti-Asian racism, Kim managed to secure a slim margin of victory, becoming the first Asian American to represent New Jersey in Congress.

Kim handily won reelection in 2020 and 2022 and later gained national attention for helping to clean up the Capitol building following the January 6 siege. Even though Kim could have relied upon retaining his seat in a more solidly Democratic constituency following changes to the 3rd district’s boundaries in 2022, it was Sen. Bob Menendez’s indictment for corruption that motivated Kim to launch his eventually successful campaign for the New Jersey Democratic nomination.

As the first Korean American senator for a state with an Asian American population of over 10%, there are several priorities that Kim could adopt in his agenda that would increase visibility toward the concerns of the Korean American and greater Asian American communities.

To begin with, anti-Asian racism and discrimination, unfortunately, remain a common occurrence even though anti-Asian hate crimes have fallen since their peak during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Compounding matters further is that, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 63% of Asian Americans feel that there is too little national awareness of discrimination against them, which was partly attributed to the so-called “model minority” stereotype of Asian American educational and economic success. As a result, developing policies that would tackle such discrimination, such as the “bamboo ceiling” hampering Asian American career progression, would be a good place to start for Kim’s agenda.

Kim could likewise motivate greater engagement from the major parties toward the Asian American community. Throughout his tenure in the House and his campaign for the Senate, Kim regularly promoted engagement with Asian Americans. Speaking as a member of that community, Kim noted, “We don’t only want to be talked to by political figures when there’s a spike in xenophobia… Treat the community as a… community that you need to listen to.”

Additionally, although Asian Americans had relatively low rates of political participation previously, this has changed recently. Relatively high Asian American voter turnout in the 2020 elections was significant enough that Tom Bonier, CEO of the Democratic political data analysis firm TargetSmart, argued that it was a major factor in Biden’s margin of victory. Kim himself demonstrates this ongoing trend of greater Asian American political participation with the progression of his political career as well, and would therefore be a strong driver for growing this outreach.

The other pressing topic relevant to Asian Americans is addressing the community’s pervasive income inequality, which a 2018 Pew report noted was the highest among all U.S. racial and ethnic groups. According to a more recent Pew report, in the Korean American community alone, the top 10% of earners receive 14.8 times more income than their counterparts at the lowest 10%.

The overall Asian American community fares a little better, with the top 10% of earners receiving 13.3 times more than their counterparts in the lowest 10%. As such, while Kim has prioritized tackling wealth inequality as a representative, he could develop policies meant to address the wealth-income gap further by addressing how Asian Americans are disproportionately affected by it.

With all that said, Kim’s nomination for the Senate already represents a historic opportunity for not only Korean Americans but the overall Asian American community across the United States. As Kim himself highlighted when arguing in favor of a National Museum of Asian Pacific American History and Culture, “Our story is not just an Asian American story, it is an American story.”

Kim’s nomination and potential election to the Senate could be one more key moment in that story, especially if he draws greater attention to the issues impacting the Asian American community and successfully spearheads policies to address them.

Francis Shin is a Korean American research analyst specializing in transatlantic institutions, anti-corruption, and clean energy policy. He has previously worked at the Atlantic Council, Royal United Services Institute and Center for a New American Security.

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